Page 57 of Sinner’s Brand

"Then what did you know?"

His eyes squeeze shut. I keep talking.

"I was taken out of the back lot of the Cattle Guard," I say. "I went there that night because it was Friday, and I was mad at you. At supper you asked where I was going, and I told you the truth to spite you. I told you the Cattle Guard. You were the only person on this earth I told."

For a year I told myself somebody followed me from the parsonage that night. I never once let myself wonder whether my father told anybody where I'd be.

His eyes come open, wet and red.

"Did Coleman Whitlock ask you where I'd be that night?"

His face crumples. He makes a low sound in his throat.

"Answer me."

"Yes."

"What did you tell him?"

"The Cattle Guard." He says it to the sidewalk. "God forgive me. I called him after supper and told him."

Neither of us says anything. A mockingbird sings in the live oak beside the church, and it's the only sound on the street.

"Why did he want to know?" I ask.

"I owed him." His voice cracks. "A gambling debt. A marker. Coleman bought it, and after that it was his to collect. Every week he'd stop by. Every week he'd say there were other ways to settle it, if I couldn't pay. And then one week he asked where you'd be on Friday night."

My father finally looks at me.

"Coleman said he only wanted to put a scare in me," he says. "His men would pick you up and keep you somewhere safe for a day or two, until I found the money. He swore you wouldn't be harmed. A deacon swore it to me, on these church steps."

"And when I didn't come home in a day or two?"

"He said you'd run off. He said somebody saw you get into a car with a man from San Antonio. A few weeks after you were gone, he told me he'd torn up my marker, so I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore." His chin trembles. "I believed him. If you ran off, then it wasn't my doing."

"You chose to believe him."

His mouth stays shut.